Ulick Burke (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Last Wednesday the Minister of State, Deputy Haughey, was in the House when I raised a matter relating to Mercy College, Woodford, County Galway and the affects on that school of the cutbacks announced in the budget. Yesterday, Deputy Noel Treacy and I attended a meeting of the board of management, parent representatives and staff of the school. They outlined in detail the effects of the withdrawal of disadvantaged status. As a result of this measure, 3.81 teachers will be lost, which represents almost 25% of the total school staff quota. The withdrawal of special status together with the financial loss of nearly €10,000 will have devastating results in this small school of approximately 230 students.

The school is a small, stand-alone, co-educational school in south-east Galway in a CLÁR programme area, where 41% of the parents do not have any formal or primary school education. Only 13% of students from the school proceed to third level education. The school has taken many children with disadvantages and special needs through to junior and leaving certificate level, and some of these have continued to third level. Will the Minister for Education and Science re-examine the effects of these cutbacks on the school? I believe if the cutbacks proceed as intended, they will threaten the very existence of the school.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to a decision in 2006 to withdraw the disadvantaged status from the school. This was later reversed by the then Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Mary Hanafin. The school was allowed to retain some staff, as well as the home school liaison person. It was vital that the school retained such assistance and the financial support. Will the Minister of State bring to the attention of the Minister for Education and Science the message that this school should retain its status for the lifetime of the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, action plan, which was the intention of the reversal of the original decision in 2006?

Noel Treacy (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I support my colleague, Deputy Burke, and I endorse his comments. We come from the constituency of Galway East where there are both urban and rural disadvantaged areas. The only positive aspect of an urban disadvantaged area is that the affected children have a choice of schools and some opportunity. However, in a rurally disadvantaged area there is no such choice and only one school. This is especially the case in mid and south County Galway along the Slieve Aughty mountain range and near the border with County Clare. In this area only one third of the population is employed and two thirds are unemployed. There is an outstanding school with an outstanding, positive attitude to all children. There are 30 special needs children in the school population. There is in place a whole school evaluation and performance system which also addresses the curriculum and subject choices. I appeal to the Minister for Education and Science to allow for the continuation ad infinitum of the DEIS programme, in line with the Departmental circular of May 2007.

Mercy College, Woodford is in a critical location. If there is to be any diminution of the services there will be a serious reduction in the numbers attending second level education, resulting in difficulties and social disadvantages. This will compound the existing situation, whereby the people are already playing against the wind and require every possible State support. These are necessary to sustain this outstanding centre of educational excellence in South Galway, an area which Deputy Burke and I are proud to represent and support.

We depend on the Minister of State and the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe. We realise the Department will treat each school on a case-by-case basis and take into account the mix of students, the disadvantages and the fact that the school population is multicultural. There were people of many nationalities living in the parish before the advent of the Celtic tiger. We appeal to the Minister of State to ensure the school receives special attention and that the provision of specialist supports continues.

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the Deputies on behalf of the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe.

Notwithstanding the increase of €302 million in the education budget for 2009, which is a real achievement in the current economic climate, several tough and difficult decisions had to be taken in framing the 2009 budget. These decisions were taken to control expenditure and to ensure sustainability in the long term. In this respect education, while protected to a much greater extent than most other areas of public expenditure, could not be entirely spared, and I acknowledge the impact of funding restrictions several areas, including at school level. However, these are the inevitable result of the current challenging economic environment and the need to manage Exchequer resources prudently.

The DEIS plan for educational inclusion provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage and an integrated school support programme. DEIS brings together and builds upon a number of interventions in schools with concentrated levels of disadvantage. There are 876 schools in the DEIS plan. These comprise 673 primary schools and 203 second-level schools.

The process of identifying schools for participation in DEIS was managed by the Educational Research Centre on behalf of the Department of Education and Science and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the inspectorate. Some 73 post primary schools, 27 urban primary schools and 123 rural primary schools that were not identified for inclusion in DEIS retained resources, including teaching posts and financial supports, under pre-existing schemes and programmes for addressing educational disadvantage.

When DEIS was introduced, a commitment was given, as a concessionary measure to these schools, that they would retain a level of support for the duration of the current DEIS initiative which is scheduled to end in 2010. While it is appreciated that the discontinuation of these resources will impact on these schools, given the current challenging economic climate, the Department considered that it was prudent to advance the withdrawal of such supports from non-DEIS schools to the beginning of the next school year.

The main focus of social inclusion measures will be to retain resources in DEIS schools. There is a need to target resources on the schools in most need and this approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General, set out in his report on primary disadvantage of 2006, which recommended that the Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.

Taken in combination, the impact of the staffing schedule changes, as well as the withdrawal of historic DEIS posts and language support, weighed off against increases expected in the numbers of teachers for demographics and resource teachers for special needs, will mean an overall net reduction of 200 posts at primary and post primary levels.

As the processing of the September 2008 enrolment returns for primary and post-primary schools is not yet finalised, it is not possible at this time to outline to the House the impact these changes will have on the allocation of mainstream teaching posts for the school year 2009-10. This includes Mercy College, Woodford. The Department will be advising individual schools in the normal way on staffing allocations for the school year 2009-10 and at that time, a more accurate indication of the mainstream staffing levels will be available.

The allocation processes include appellate mechanisms under which schools can appeal against the allocation due to them under the staffing schedules. This is particularly relevant at post-primary level where the appellate process especially considers any specific curricular needs of the school concerned. At primary level, the normal redeployment arrangements apply. However, at post-primary there is no effective system-wide redeployment scheme at present and this can mean that schools retain teachers, though over quota. I remind the Deputies that the ceiling of two on the number of language support teachers per school is being re-imposed, with some alleviation for the position of those schools where there is sufficient concentration of newcomer pupils as a proportion of the overall pupil enrolment.

I again thank the Deputies for providing me with the opportunity to address the House on this matter and to outline the current position here.

Ulick Burke (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Will the Minister of State bring this matter to the attention of the Minister for Education and Science?

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The specific school was not mentioned in the notice on the Adjournment.

Ulick Burke (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I raised the matter last week.

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I will bring the comments of both Deputies to the attention of the Minister.